Dawn Valley Village
by fascinationex
Summary: A stardew valley fusion, although knowledge of stardew valley is not essential. Twenty-something divorcee Sakura ruins her life with poor choices then summarily flees and retires to the middle of nowhere to start anew. Modern AU, Sakura centric.
1. Chapter 1

Sakura returned to her cramped hotel room about twelve times more exhausted than when she'd left.

All Tsunade's friends were awful. It was a fact. The woman herself wasn't too bad, but every time Sakura met one of her friends? _Awful._

'Come out for a drink or two,' Tsunade'd said. 'Loosen up,' she said. 'Take your mind off things.'

Sakura's hotel room had all the charm of a freshly opened box of Kleenex. It was neat, it was white and that was about it. It served a specific function.

She crossed it in six tired steps and dropped her keycard onto a table crammed into the far corner, where it joined the bland hotel-branded stationary. The bed was right there, then, so she turned and flopped on her face.

It was clean but it smelled all wrong. Didn't smell like Sasuke, she thought dully.

She could still hear Mei crowing, _divorced before you're even thirty, that makes me feel better, doesn't it?_ and her barbed little laugh.

Mei was awful. All Tsunade's friends were. Awful drunks, usually.

Sakura, importantly, was one of Tsunade's friends.

Being awful was probably why Mei was still unmarried, since she obviously cared so much about it. Being a bitch probably made it hard to get a boyfriend, too, right?

Sakura groaned.

That thought was petty and beneath her - not to mention stupid. Plenty of terrible people somehow ended up happily married to other, equally terrible people. And sometimes people who weren't terrible...

Or who didn't think they were terrible, at least...

Sakura made another exhausted and pathetic noise.

She could have gotten drunker, more safely and efficiently, with less commentary, in her own damn hotel room. She rolled over, squinting against the strips of streetlight let through by the blinds. In the nocturnal half light they cast long bars across her bed and her body.

Maybe there was something in the minibar.

No. She had to see the solicitor tomorrow, and then after that she was to meet Uchiha Mikoto for goodness only knew what. It wouldn't be a good idea to drink any more...

A shower, she decided, still unmoving. A really hot one, which would turn her skin red and make her tired enough to sleep.

The thought was there, but the motivation didn't follow. It took her twenty minutes to get back up.

The morning dawned, which was the first bad news of the day. After Sakura had come to terms with that terrible fact, the rest sort of fell in line, as much as these things could do.

She managed to put off having to actually see Sasuke - despite how her whole body missed him like a lost goddamn limb - for another week by emailing and calling him. Sasuke was expectedly terrible at communicating via writing or talking, or indeed in any situation where she couldn't see the specific set of his jaw and the angle of his eyebrows. Somehow this, too, seemed agonisingly familiar and weirdly endearing.

It was sort of disgusting, how much cooperating with him on the matter of their divorce reminded Sakura of why she liked him in the first place.

The solicitor was as bland and professional and patient about it as she could possibly have hoped for, even though Sakura was pretty sure he thought she was an idiot. It didn't matter - by the end of the process she'd be properly divorced and she and Sasuke would never have to speak again. And they probably wouldn't, either. They didn't travel in the same social circles, and he wasn't what anyone, however generous, might call chatty. Or friendly. Or cordial. Or... well. Civil was usually pushing it.

The meeting with Mikoto was even more greatly dreaded than the one with the solicitor. Mikoto wasn't a party to an awkward mutual silence, unlike Sasuke. None of those unspoken rules applied to her, and she didn't seem inclined to respect them either. It had been nothing more than a voice mail message, short and gentle and to the point, early last week: 'Hello, Sakura. I'd like to meet with you. Let me know when you're available in the coming week.'

And then Sakura had put it off for as long as she could, but - however gentle she seemed on the outside, Mikoto was not a woman accustomed to being told 'no'. Nobody would have dared.

So Sakura took public transport across town to the tea house where Mikoto wanted to meet, a tiny hole-in-the-wall wooden place with low tables and tatami mats. The whole place smelled of sweet soy and green tea, and at two in the afternoon it was quiet.

Sakura was three minutes late, so of course Mikoto was already there, calm and waiting for her. She was a classical beauty, round-faced and pale with the coarse, inky hair her son had inherited. She gave the impression of someone who had been waiting forever, and who would remain waiting, implacably, forever, until she got what she was waiting for.

"Please excuse me for being late," Sakura said politely.

"I hadn't noticed," Mikoto assured her, although Sakura was certain she had.

They talked politely, small talk, _how have you been?_ and _did your dinner party go well_? and _work is still busy_? for long enough that Sakura began to wonder why they were even here. There had to be more to this than a polite catch-up, even if Mikoto was a perfectly pleasant person to have tea with.

She came out with it, finally, after almost a full half hour of pleasantries and small talk.

"I think," said Mikoto, lowering her cup. It met the wood of the table without a sound. "That we will see less of each other now."

Sakura hunched over her tea. It was true. She would... definitely see less of her (ex-) mother in law after divorcing the woman's son.

Sakura felt the overwhelming urge to apologise. It was stupid, of course. The time to apologise had long passed - that had been roughly when she'd said, "we should get a divorce," and ideally before Sasuke had responded, "I think that's a good idea."

She'd miss Mikoto, almost as much as she already missed Sasuke - and more honestly, too, because she missed Sasuke from a sense of familiarity and comfort, and she'd miss Mikoto because they got on and she liked her. That was something nobody had warned her about, regarding her divorce - that she wouldn't just lose her husband, but her family, too.

Sakura's parents were dead, and she was part of a long line of only children. She didn't have a lot of family to fall back on.

There wasn't exactly bad blood between Sakura and Sasuke - but no breakup could be wholly without bitterness, and having Sakura around would be... awkward for the whole family for a while.

"I... it wouldn't be good. Maybe we can... meet for tea, or..." Sakura hedged, feeling depressed at the thought.

"Of course," said Mikoto immediately. "Sakura, of course. You and I have always been good friends. But, I wanted to talk to you about something else. I know you left the house with Sasuke."

"It's Uchiha property," she pointed out, shifting in her seat. It was, and she hadn't even tried to have it put in her name because of it. Sakura had never quite belonged to that place even when she lived there, and it was in part because it was so very... Uchiha. It belonged to someone stern and serious who wanted to raise a big family of stern, serious, dark-eyed children who would grow up to be... rich and stern and serious and wildly emotional and relentlessly political, probably.

"It is," Mikoto said, "and you were very wise not to argue about it, but... forgive me, Sakura, but I know your parents were unable to leave you anything, and-"

A sinking sensation took hold of Sakura's guts. Was Mikoto here to offer her money? She shifted uncomfortably in her chair again. She couldn't...

"- I know you've been staying in hotels -"

She didn't want to interrupt Mikoto of course, but she could feel her face going hot with humiliation.

"I wanted to..." Mikoto pursed her lips. "I wanted to be sure, for my own peace of mind, that you had something to fall back on. Just - just in case, Sakura."

She dug in her bag and pulled out a paper folder, and Sakura couldn't hold back anymore. "Mikoto," she started. "I can't -"

"It's not money," said Mikoto sharply. Sakura bit her tongue. "It's a gift. It was - listen, it was passed to me just before I married Fugaku and it remains mine to do with as I wish. It's my property. I would like - I insist, in the strongest possible terms - that you accept it as a gift."

She passed the folder to Sakura with a steady hand, and caught hers when Sakura reached out to take it. Mikoto's hands were lightly lined, soft-skinned. Her nails were uniformly shaped and cared for. Sakura was very aware of her own rough skin and chewed fingernails.

Mikoto didn't seem to notice. She just wrapped Sakura's fingers in hers. "Do not give me the grief of sending a daughter of mine out into the world with nothing."

Sakura swallowed.

"I..." she took the folder and flipped it around.

"You can do as you like with it - sell it or knock it all over or - it doesn't matter. Just -"

It was a deed. A... a 'sale' Mikoto was making to Sakura for a token two hundred yen.

"I can't..." Sakura started, bewildered.

Mikoto was unyielding, though, and by the end of their meeting, Sakura found herself drawn in to a nearby office to complete the 'sale' directly. This, then, explained why the tea house had been on the wrong side of town - it was nearer Mikoto's lawyer. She had planned it all out very carefully.

"Thank you," said Mikoto, clutching Sakura's hand as though Sakura was the one who had done her a favour. "You probably think I'm being ridiculous, but I'll sleep better now."

The street wasn't very busy, and Mikoto's driver stuck out like a lily in a field of poppies.

"Go on," Sakura encouraged her gently, still feeling raw and bewildered by the whole exchange. "I'll call you."

Mikoto met her eyes. "Do."

She waited until the car had gone, its expensive engines purring softly on the empty street, before she leant back against the old brick wall and slumped.

What on earth was Sakura ever going to do with a sprawling property out in the middle of nowhere? Other, she thought sourly, than to pay tax on it.

She went home, for a value of home that indicated her hotel room, raided the minibar - they'd refilled it, thank god - and promptly forgot all about the property.

For now.

It was another three weeks of confused hotel living and certainly too much drinking before Sakura's life took a nose dive. She'd thought she'd pretty well hit rock bottom already - the life of a divorcee under thirty with no fixed address and no friends who shamelessly got drunk before twelve noon on her days off seemed already pretty dire.

But life was waiting in the wings to hand her a drill and prove there was always further down to go.

She sagged into her seat. It wasn't very comfortable.

"Oh my god," she said, covering her face with her hands.

Tsunade's office was dim as always, blinds drawn against he glow of the mid-morning sun, probably in deference to her own hangover.

"In part, it's just rotten luck," said the doctor herself, seeming much more prosaic about the matter than Sakura felt. Certainly she looked like she was experiencing the very long morning after a very big night. She dropped her dark glasses on the desk and set her coffee mug down.

"Who hasn't turned up to practice drunk before? It's absolutely imbecilic, but everyone's done it once."

Of course, Tsunade rarely had to actually be in surgery, so it probably mattered a lot less if she was...

"I wasn't drunk," said Sakura pathetically through her hands. The coffee smelt heavenly and she wanted six.

She hadn't been drunk. Wasn't drunk. But she'd been drunk last night, that was for sure, and she certainly wasn't at her best this morning.

"Hungover then. You're lucky that she had no family, so there's no one left to sue you. And that the surgery doesn't have a high success rate to start with. But you know -"

Sakura made a noise like a dying cat.

"Stop it. Look at me." There was a bang. Sakura jumped, only to realise that the sound had been Tsunade's hand slamming down onto the desk. A trickle of dark coffee dripped down one side of he mug.

Tsunade met her eyes unflinchingly for a second. "This isn't the first time you've had a patient die."

"Of course not." Sakura made a noise in the back of her throat. This was a hospital. It was where people came to die. She hadn't been d... hungover, those times, though. "That's different though."

"You're right. It is." Tsunade let that hang there for a second, until Sakura wanted to dive out the door, or perhaps under the desk. Her head hurt, and she wasn't convinced it was entirely her hangover. "We've got to cover ourselves, too. We can make sure we don't link her death with your drinking, but we do have to report it -"

Sakura clenched her jaw but didn't protest. The hospital would get mired in trouble so deep it'd never haul itself out if anybody found out they hadn't reported her to the Board.

"-And let you go."

"You can say 'fire you'," said Sakura, still vibrating with anxiety and feeling faintly shell-shocked. "I definitely deserve it."

It was bad news to be reported to the Board for showing up drunk - hungover - of course, but since it seemed like Tsunade wasn't going to tell them that it had also contributed to her messing up up a tricky procedure, Sakura felt she was getting off lightly.

Maybe too lightly, honestly. It was true that the surgery was tricky, and it was true that doctors and surgeons were no strangers to patient deaths, but... Now Sakura was always going to wonder if her patient had died or if she'd killed her.

"You deserve a lot worse than that," Tsunade said severely. For a second her feelings got the better of her: "Sakura, you know better!"

Sakura cringed. She did know better, was the worst of it.

A second later Tsunade seemed like she'd gotten control of her temper again - however temporarily.

Sakura might have preferred if she'd yelled some more. But it was just Tsunade, looking every minute of every day of her age, leaning tiredly on her desk. Her expression was exhausted, not enraged.

"Do you think I'm going to enjoy reporting my own student?" she muttered.

Sakura twitched.

"Cooperate with the Board's processes and use your suspension as an opportunity to get your damn life together, okay? Sort yourself out. You can't let this sort of thing turn into a habit."

A small, adamant part of Sakura wondered what on earth Tsunade thought she had to say about that, since her reputation as a brilliant doctor was only outstripped by her reputation as a sloppy drunk, but she clenched her jaw on it. That would have been crossing a line.

Tsunade looked up, glanced at her expression and then snorted, apparently reading her mind. "I know, more than anyone, that moving on from a spouse is hard, but... Sakura, something like this? This can't happen twice."

She nodded, feeling more sober than she had in a month, and watched without comment as Tsunade tugged at the chain of her necklace.

"When you've arranged your life around another person, it takes a while to remember, sometimes," she said slowly, "that you can be a whole person without them."

"...Tsunade," Sakura murmured, but her boss - teacher, mentor, friend, but today: definitely her boss - didn't seem to hear her, and after a moment she elected not to comment.

This absolute disaster of a morning left her in hot water with the Medical Board, of course, and her license to practice was summarily suspended, paperwork pending. This was... well, Sakura did not enjoy having the rules applied to her but she was adult enough to acknowledge that if anybody else had been in her position she'd have agreed that immediate suspension was the right call.

Unfortunately, being able to acknowledge that did not help Sakura deal with the ramifications of the suspension - she couldn't practice and had no income coming in. And divorces were expensive.

She wasn't immediately in dire straits, but with no money coming in she knew her savings wouldn't last more than a few months - which was probably as long as the Board would take to even process her suspension.

Living the hotel life was only going to make it worse, too.

Sakura spent two weeks dithering around, looking at research positions and places where she might get paid for guest lectures in her area of speciality, before she gave up on stop-gaps. If she'd wanted to be a researcher she'd have taken biomed and not a qualification in applied medical sciences.

So what, other than medicine, was Sakura willing and able to do? She'd need to find somewhere cheap to stay to manage it, too. She couldn't keep living out of hotels.

Mikoto's deed from all those weeks ago seemed suddenly to occupy a great many of her waking thoughts. There was nowhere cheaper than a place you already owned, especially if it was out in the middle of nowhere where the rates were peanuts, too...

It seemed a bit nuts at first. Move out to the middle of nowhere in the country? And do what? She wouldn't know anyone, she wouldn't have anything to do, she...

But maybe that was the point. A change of scene and society, right?

What was stopping her?

A few things, as it turned out, but nothing insurmountable. She let her solicitor know how to contact her, since they were still finalising the smoking wreck of her marriage. She emailed Sasuke to let him know she was leaving town, and even got a downright friendly 'I'll make a note of it' in response.

She let the hotel know when she'd be leaving and bought a ticket for a country bus departing at eight thirty in the morning from a stop at a city transport depot.

Sakura hadn't taken a lot to her hotels with her. Clothes that still fit her, makeup, identification, personal hygiene items. Her books and things were still in their - in Sasuke's house. She'd already read them, and she didn't have anywhere to take them anyway. She'd left half her jewellery, too, because heaven knew some of it was family stuff, and she'd felt weird and guilty taking much of the rest.

Not as weird and guilty as she felt about her patient dying and getting her license suspended, of course.

It all fit in two bags.

She felt a strange, private shame just walking around outside on her own now. She was half tempted to tell random strangers on the street about it - _hello, stranger, I killed one of my patients. Maybe. Maybe not. Probably. She'd have had a much better chance if I hadn't been drunk at work at nine in the morning, and I have feelings about it that I suspect may not entirely be solved by the application of more alcohol._

Sasuke never drank.

She rubbed her forehead a lot, wore dark glasses to save her stinging eyes from the sun, and tried to muster a smile for the bus driver who helped her load her luggage.

"Thanks," she said, although she was pretty sure she was better fit to load her own heavy bags than this old guy was.

"No problem," he said cheerfully, smiling at her so guilelessly that her stomach churned. "We'll be leaving in ten."

"Great," she said, and boarded posthaste.

The bus went a long way before it arrived at the valley. Sakura had read 'nine hours' on the website when she'd booked her ticket, but she had not completely understood just how far away that really meant.

Two hours took her out of the city and past the samey sprawl of suburban houses and shiny family sedans, out past an assortment of small properties. Then there was a vineyard and a paddock full of leggy horses who ran from the rumble of the bus. And after that it was just empty. There were sprawling green fields in which was growing exactly nothing that Sakura could see any use for, then a steadily rising path into the mountains. The road wound in huge, snaking curves and the greenery on either side transformed into uncomfortable drops, fallen boughs and dark green foliage. There wasn't a lot else for miles.

She'd been checking the map application on her phone but as their road wound higher the connection dropped out. About eight hours in they stopped at a tiny mountain village and the last three other people got off the bus.

"Excuse me," she said to the driver as he got back on board, "I'm worried I've missed my stop or something..."

"No," he said with a smile that was missing teeth, "Dawn Valley is next up. We're only running a little late, we should be there by six."

They'd left at 8:30 AM. Sakura licked her lips. "Okay. Thank you."

The sun was beginning to go down by the time they made it, colouring everything golden red, and the road had turned to dirt long ago. They stopped with a sigh of mechanics next to a bus stop that was... in the middle of nowhere.

The road stretched on either side, apparently forever. There was no hint of a path.

Sakura had a screenshot of the map, but...

"Uh," she said, alighting with her bag over her shoulder, "could you direct me toward..."

"Look," said the bus driver, nodding at something over her shoulder. "That'd be the welcoming committee up ahead. You'll be fine."

Sakura blinked as the doors closed with a snap and the bus took off with a groan and a scrape of dirt under its big wheels.

The 'welcoming committee', as the driver had phrased it, was one man and he did not in fact look even slightly welcoming.

The man was huge, with broad shoulders and long legs and dark, scar-studded skin that made him look very fierce, and he glowered down at Sakura. His eyes just peeked over the edge of his huge dark scarf. It was not that cold.

He certainly couldn't have been expecting her, because she hadn't told anyone she was coming, so... he must have been out here for his own reasons. Whatever those were.

"Um, excuse me, hello," said Sakura uncertainly. "Are you from the village? Sorry to bother you, but could you give me directions there?"

If it was humanly possible, his expression became even unfriendlier. His eyes drifted to her bag.

"Planning on working here?" his voice was deep, gravelly, and unimpressed.

"Er," said Sakura, wondering just quietly if there was a response here that was about to put her in actual physical danger. But if he lived there he'd find out eventually, so there was no point lying about it. "I, er, inherited a property here, a farm on the west side of the village-"

"The Uchiha place?" he cut in.

Sakura blinked. "You know it?"

Wait, Mikoto's _maiden_ name was Uchiha? That was... She wrinkled her nose. No accounting for taste. Or family politics, apparently. Should have guessed.

"It's not a big town." His scowl was suspicious now, and his gaze intent. "You're going to sell it?"

"I... no? I was going to live there...?" As far as Sakura knew, the property was sort of a mess. She'd gotten the impression that it would cost a fair bit to fix it up and make it worth selling, and... well, aside from not having any idea where to start, there was a part of Sakura that felt like it would be very poor form indeed to sell something given to her as a gift.

"Good," grunted the man. Then, "Fine. I'll show you where the gates are."

It was a lucky thing that he'd been there because it turned out that the path down to the village was more convoluted than she'd anticipated. Dawn Valley Village was, as its name implied, very much in a valley, and the surrounding hills and ridges were steep and hard to pass.

"I'm Haruno Sakura," Sakura said as they walked, feeling awkward. She was glad the big man had not offered to help with her bags - there was helpful, and hen there was so helpful as to cause suspicion and terror.

"Kakuzu," he grunted. First name? Surname? He did not clarify.

The fence, when they arrived there, was more a demarkation of the property boundaries than any kind of actual barrier. It consisted of a series of posts strung along with steel wire at regular intervals. They headed down a winding dirt path that was heavily overgrown at the edges but which bore traces of being used at some point. The light held steady enough that Sakura could see the ruts and holes in the packed dirt where a cart had once gone frequently.

The gate to which Kakuzu finally led her was chest high - on her, at least, although it was kind of rib-high on him - and he watched keenly while she dug out the big old key to its padlock.

It clicked open cleanly. The hinges screeched when she pushed the gate.

"This is where I leave you," he said. He had a short way of speaking, although Sakura guessed that could just be because she'd wasted his time this evening. He hadn't had to show her the way, though, if it really bothered him.

"Thanks," she said, with her own strained smile.

"Thank me by doing your shopping at the general store," he said.

She stared at him.

He stared back, eyes unblinking over his scarf and glinting strangely in the sunset.

"Okay," she said slowly. This seemed to be the only way he was going to leave.

He grunted and turned away and she wrestled the gate closed between them. There was probably no real need to close the gate, since there was nobody out here to whom it would be a reasonable barrier, and the only creature that might escape the property was Sakura herself, but...

Some part of Sakura's core personality rebelled at the idea of leaving the gate open.

It clanged shut after a laborious effort, and by then the light was beginning to fade and she struggled to make out his figure as it disappeared down the path.

The land itself, as far as she could tell in the steadily encroaching dusk, had probably been a real farm at some point, but now it was a mess of weeds, rocks, packed earth and six-year trees. The space was cluttered with the debris of neglect, but it was also a lot of space to use for... something. Definitely something. Sakura had nebulous ideas about growing vegetables, but no idea what or how to do it.

All that could come later. It seemed like, whatever she did or didn't know abut actually growing anything, she'd have to make sure there was space for it first. She'd need... what, an axe? There was a distant concept in her mind that trees could be removed with an axe. That was definitely a thing somewhere.

There were probably books on this topic. Or, like, YouTube tutorials?

Sakura hauled her bags up to the wooden buildings that she could still make out from between the young trees. One of them was a poorly maintained outbuilding of some kind with its roof collapsed on one side, which smelled like a series of increasingly untidy animals had made their homes there over the years.

The other outbuilding housed a toilet, a sink and a showerhead, and it seemed dirty but not damaged. She'd have to find where to turn the water back on, but she could do that once she'd put her bags down.

She walked around the farmhouse, finally, and discovered to her relief that it seemed like it was in good shape - no obvious damage, no weird holes or nests or smells. Inside, the single-room house had been left untouched for years and the dust was thick in the air. There was a bed in one corner, covered by an off-white dust sheet, and a table in the middle of the room. Otherwise there were two windows, a big old chest with a copper catch, metal hooks in the wall for hanging something, and a big fireplace in one corner. And that was it.

Sakura licked her lips. It wasn't much by any stretch, but it was all hers, and unless she did something impressively stupid - more stupid than what she'd already done, presumably - nobody would be able to take it from her.

If nothing else, it was a roof over her head, which was the most pressing of her immediate concerns. She dropped her bags and went to find where she could switch the water back on and reestablish the connection to the main pipes. Out this far, that was probably all that was necessary.

The water in the shower, toilet and sink was running by the time it was dark, even if it was hard to tell what colour it was running. She squinted at it in the light from her phone and cautiously licked some off her fingers. It smelled fine, and tasted slightly metallic - but probably just from the pipes, she guessed.

The house had no electricity and Sakura hadn't thought to include a proper torch in her belongings, so once she went back into the farm house she again used her phone to dig through her bags. She was glad that she'd at least had the foresight to slip a packet of senbei and a can of tea into her things.

She ate in the dark, getting crumbs everywhere, flicking through information online about getting her electricity connected again, which seemed to be a slightly more complicated process than turning the water back on.

When she was finished eating, she tugged the dust sheet off the bed and found a mostly-clean cotton-stuffed mattress on the bed beneath it. She flipped it over because she'd read somewhere that was what you were supposed to do, and then she pulled a coat from her bag over her for warmth, turned her phone off and settled in for the night.

It was darker here, she thought. No lights outside. And the valley seemed cold. And Sakura had... nothing. Not even a real job anymore.

She was probably too old, and too complicit in her own problems, to spend her first night in a new house crying her eyes out. She knew it, and she felt slightly ashamed about it, but... there wasn't an age limit on being lost and alone and upset about it.

At least she was sober, she thought, and then made an ugly laughing sound while she stared into the dark.


	2. Chapter 2

Sakura woke with the sun in her eyes. The light was cool and weak through the grimy window and her first breath tasted of dust. The night had been cold. Her joints were stiff.

The despair of the night had waned to a fatalistic acceptance with time, so after staring blankly at the ceiling for a few minutes she got out of bed with a minimum of sulking around feeling sorry for herself. The wooden floor was at least warmer than tile or stone on her feet.

Sakura crept to the door and threw it open, blinking outside. The air out there was fresh, and the overgrown grass looked springy and lush in the cool grey light of dawn.

Nothing moved. No cars sounded, no trains rumbled, no voices rose and fell with conversation.

Sakura could see, if a little grudgingly, why someone might like this. But to her, it felt like she could be the only person left on the planet, and that was distinctly unsettling.

There was still her can of tea, which she hadn't had last night. She dug it out, popped the button on the bottom of it and left it to hiss and heat thoroughly as she went to clean herself up in the icy water of the outhouse shower.

The water wasn't going to be warm, she gathered, until she had her electricity put on. That was a priority.

In the daylight, she could see that between the outbuilding and the farmhouse proper was a path of smooth, flat, grey stones, which had been overgrown so badly with surrounding grasses that the whole path was almost invisible now. She scampered across it barefoot and returned to the relative warmth of the farmhouse. There Sakura wrapped her hands around the hot can, feeling like this had been a minor stroke of genius as its heat seeped into her chilled fingers.

Clean, with her hair curling damply and the oversweetened milk tea warming her belly, Sakura pulled her boots back on and contemplated the things she'd need to get done today.

She wanted to walk the perimeter of the property - she had a general idea, but she suspected, now that she'd had a look, that the place was actually bigger than she'd anticipated - and call the company to get her electricity on. She also needed at least some food and a blanket, and maybe an axe or something...

There was a fireplace in her tiny cabin, too, so she might see about getting some matches and easy kindling while she was out.

Sakura turned her phone on to check the time and make a shopping list, and the second the screen lit up it went _ding ding ding_ with a cacophony of message notifications.

[ ] 17:55:12 - _wine bar next to that book shop, 7:30?_

[ ] 23:52:17 - _u know i hd to report sakura._

Sakura snorted. Tsunade's ability to spell was inversely proportional to how drunk she was. She was a morose, sulky, bleak drunk most of the time, so Sakura hoped she'd found _someone_ to come out with her, even if it hadn't been Sakura. Probably Shizune would have gone.

She wondered how to reassure Tsunade that she wasn't mad without actually implying that Tsunade might care if she was mad. Drunk Tsunade was a lot more transparent than sober Tsunade. Sakura hesitated over her text, and began one about six times:

 _had my phone off, sorry. i'm out of town, won't be in contact for a-_

That made it sound like she was desperately avoiding Tsunade.

 _sorry I missed you. i found somewhere to stay that's not the hotel but_

Not that, either.

 _Went on vaca-_

Certainly not.

 _i'm not mad, it's not your fault you're just doing your job-_

No.

Her thumb stilled over the touch pad. She had no idea what to say. Sakura licked her lips and decided to think about that later. She flicked her screen to the next message.

[U. Naruto] 06:10:23 - _Ne, Sasuke says you moved again. Did he do something? Do you want me to beat him up again?_

Sakura snorted. [H. Sakura] 07:12:09 - _Just found somewhere to stay that wasn't a hotel. I'm not made of money, you know. A place called Dawn Valley. I don't think you'll find it on a map. I haven't got the electricity on yet, so don't get worried if I'm not in contact for a few days._

She didn't even bother addressing the topic of beating Sasuke up. Naruto and Sasuke were friends, in as much as Sasuke could be said to be friends with anyone.

That was it for her messages, but after a second's reflection she decided it would be better if Ino found out from Sakura and not from one of the several people who knew where she'd gone. She wrote her a social media direct message instead of a text - Ino seemed to prefer it.

Unlike with Naruto, who probably wouldn't have understood, Sakura included the information about her problems with the hospital. Ino was a fundamentally more thoughtful - and suspicious - person, and probably wouldn't have deigned to be understanding _without_ that context.

At least, she thought with a little better cheer, there was mobile data internet out here. If she hadn't been able to get a signal, she'd... probably already have perished.

She glanced again at the time. It was early. The sun had woken her up very, very early. She was keeping farm hours. Rising with the dawn. Imbibing the fresh air.

 _I'm not sure I like this_ , Sakura thought, eyeing the time and date on her phone.

Well. Maybe she should check to see if anything in the village would even be open. She pulled up her map application and found that it was going to take her at least half an hour to walk into the outskirts of town from the edge of her own farm. Country living, she guessed. Growing stuff probably needed a lot of space.

From the pins on her map, there was a RapidMart right in town. They were pretty ubiquitous in the cities at this point. It struck her as comforting and familiar to see that they had one right here in this tiny country village, too.

Her eyes fell upon another pin. General store... Oh, right. She had said she'd try the general store, hadn't she? She guessed there must have been a great deal of competition from the RapidMart. They were so big and so universally known, after all... Suddenly, her conversation with that man last night made a lot more sense.

Well, fine. She'd check out he general store first, even if it was a little further away.

The walk into the village would have been okay if she hadn't been really aware that she had no electricity yet, and therefore trying to preserve the battery on her phone. Normally she'd have listened to music the whole way. As it was, her only company was the chirping of early birds in the trees and the sound of a breeze hitting the foliage, and she spent the walk lost in the murky quagmire of her own dismal thoughts.

Sakura's life was... Not going well right now.

She only pulled her phone out at all to check the map about twenty minutes in.

She discovered then that she had no signal whatsoever and her heart stopped in her chest.

Apparently there were places in Dawn Valley where you got no service.

Okay. She could... still go back to the farm, if she had to. There was service there, at least. But for how long? Panicked visions of getting stuck out here and living like a wild person with no electricity and cold water and no food all filled her mind for an icy second. Days of isolation and feral living stretched before her into the future.

Then reality reasserted itself.

She hadn't saved her map before the network dropped out, but she was at least _on a path_. It was a dirt path that ran next to a fence, and people didn't make paths that went nowhere. It would take her to something, and that something was probably the village - all she had to do was face east and walk.

It was only a few minutes of walking later that she saw the blue logo of the RapidMart rising above the canopies of nearby trees. This was definitely the right direction.

Sakura didn't actually do a lot of walking in her day to day life, so by the time she reached the friendly 'WELCOME TO DAWN VALLEY VILLAGE' sign at the end of the dirt road, she was - not tired, exactly, but her hair was messy and there was sweat slicking the backs of her knees. She could have, and probably would have, gone right into the RapidMart - but of course, that guy who'd shown her the way yesterday had wanted her to try the general goods store.

She contemplated it for a second, because she really didn't feel like walking any further, and RapidMart was familiar, and he would probably never know.

But he hadn't _had_ to take her right to the gates. He could have given her vague directions and left her to get lost after sunset. And Sakura could have ignored him and gone to the RapidMart anyway, but she did feel ...sort of obligated to him.

It was probably a good idea to build up some goodwill in a new place.

It was only a few more streets, anyway - the other side of the village, given the size of the village - and she'd already walked for the better part of an hour to get here. She gave the RapidMart a mournful glance in passing, but took herself off to the general store with the feeling of one laboriously climbing to the moral high ground.

She got to see more of the village like this anyway. There were neat little houses with boxes of greenery under their windows and carefully maintained gardens out the front, but few fences - those, apparently, were reserved for the farms. The roads through the village were mostly dirt, but very broad, with no gutters - they just turned into grass at one edge, and presumably this meant that you were no longer on a road, but rather a footpath. She saw a number of painted doors or plaques of wood, although some of them were in pretty poor repair. There was an old pickup in someone's dirt driveway, wheels stained with dark mud and shell spotted with dust.

The river went through the village in its middle, murky and distinctly wet-smelling. The bridge across it was old and wooden, with no railings, but it was wide enough that Sakura wasn't worried. Over the edge she could see the greenish water flowing fast, broken here and there only by froth where it hit some submerged obstacle.

The general store was a stout wooden building and it opened at eight, which meant Sakura had only ten minutes to kill by the time she noticed it. It was identified by a wooden sign that creaked on a chain in the inconsistent breeze. It was brightly painted, depicting a jar and a bottle and some splotches that might have been grapes, and beneath that were the words 'GENERAL STORE. GROCERIES. DRY GOODS. SPIRITS'.

It all seemed too cheerful and friendly to have been commissioned or made by that Kakuzu, but what did Sakura know? First impressions weren't everything.

Separated from the general store by a narrow gap full of knee-deep grasses was what Sakura tentatively labelled a "community building", although it didn't look exactly like anything she could name. It had a vaguely shrinelike air about it with its wooden pillars, but it wasn't buddhist or shinto. There was a symbol hanging from its overhang on a red-dyed cloth, and it had a distinctly public air about it. Perhaps it was a clubhouse or society room? She couldn't tell just by looking.

Across the wide village street from the store was a bar, though, which was more familiar ground for Sakura. There was even a red lantern out the front, although it was unilt in the morning light. She took a peek in through the window and found the darkned interior very, very familiar looking indeed - it could have been a any bar, anywhere, although it was larger than many of the ones in the city. More space out here in the middle of nowhere, Sakura guessed.

Still, even just glancing through the window she could almost feel the stickiness of the bar top under her hands. It was nice to spot something so familiar feeling, even if -

The door of the general store rattled behind her while Sakura was leaning to see the interior of the bar. She turned and spotted Kakuzu in the doorway there. In the better light of morning, she could see him clearly and found him only marginally less fierce and intimidating. He certainly filled up all the space in the door - he must have been well over six feet tall, and his clinging grey sweater was not remotely disguising the breadth of his shoulders or the swell of muscle in his arms. He had a scarf tucked neatly around his mouth again, which didn't really help.

He met her eyes for a second, flipped the sign in the door to OPEN and then disappeared further into the store without a backwards glance.

Just about as personable as he'd been yesterday, then.

She wasn't really here to socialise or make friends, but it might have been nice to meet someone friendly from the village - especially since she was going to be here for a while.

Oh well. Sakura hitched her bag more securely onto her shoulder and headed for the door.

The hinges gave a soft creak when she pushed it open. The inside was all warm wood and rows upon rows of narrow and over-full but meticulously organised shelves, with bins of produce dominating the area around the front. There was a fridge right up the back with a modest range - milk, cream, cheese, a couple of carbonated drinks.

Kakuzu might not have been friendly but he certainly didn't bother Sakura while she was picking out what she needed. She collected a basket at the front of the shop and wandered through the cramped, packed aisles until she found a bunch of big stormproof matches, canned foods that would be edible without a fridge or a stove for a while, and...

"Do you have, er, like, blankets, or..."

Kakuzu looked up from what he was doing behind his register - which was cracked in one corner and looked positively antique - grunted and pointed. Customer service at its finest. She couldn't really complain, though, because she followed his vague gesture between two shelves and found at the end of them was a big bin of pillows and a tidy pile of blankets. The selection was tiny, but they were exactly what she needed and the prices weren't really any higher than she might have anticipated in the city.

RapidMart would have been cheaper, she thought, glancing down at her purchases. She wasn't exactly poor - yet - but she also didn't have an income right now...

Maybe she'd look there another time, Sakura decided, hovering uncertainly with the idea. Then she emerged from behind the shelf to find Kakuzu's eyes locked on her as though he'd sensed the very thought as it crossed her mind.

Perhaps she could also... _not_ do that.

Sakura did her best to avoid his eyes and ducked behind some more shelving. She did not emerge into his sight line again until it was time to pay for her purchases.

Whatever else could be said about Kakuzu, he was very efficient. His ancient cash register didn't seem to have a calculator - at least not a working one, anyway - and evidently functioned more as an extremely heavy place to store the float. Despite that, his total matched the rough running tally Sakura had in her head, which meant that not only did he know the price of every item cold, but that he could add it mentally within a few seconds. He noted it all down in shorthand, and scribbled her out a receipt in ink.

It had been at least a decade since Sakura had even seen a handwritten receipt. Kakuzu pulled his own carbon copy out from behind a sheet of inked paper and stored it in the till.

She peered at her copy, bemused, after she'd tucked all her purchases into her bag. The pillow stuck out the top because it and the blanket were bulky, but it wasn't that heavy so she'd surely be all right walking back.

"Have a good day," said Kakuzu, looking like he could not possibly have been less sincere about that wish. His glaring eyes made it hard to believe he wanted anything for Sakura except possibly her immediate death.

"Ah." Her eyebrow twitched. "Thank you," she said gamely anyway. Maybe his face was just like that. Maybe he hated mornings.

She smiled fixedly, and felt a corner of her mouth ticking. He could at least _try._

The door hinges creaked just as she was trying to shove the receipt into one corner of her bag without upsetting anything else. She probably wouldn't need it, but he'd written it out so she might as well have it...

"Good morning, Kakuzu," came a voice. It was deep and warm and so loud in the relative quiet that she nearly dropped her bag. "I've got mail, are you- oh, hello. You're new."

Sakura finished shoving everything into her bag and turned.

The guy was tall, with a warm tan and long, trailing dark hair that was supremely glossy. He was big through the shoulders and narrow in the hips, long-limbed, dark-eyed, and smiling a broad and guileless smile. For some reason, Sakura's mouth went dry.

He tapped his chin, looking her up and down. Kakuzu had been immediately forgotten, and his full attention was a heavy weight upon her. "I don't think I've met you before. And we have such a quiet little village! Are you visiting someone here?"

"I've just gotten in," said Sakura, forcing the words out and hoping she didn't sound stupid. He had a good voice, low and... er, good. She blinked rapidly, torn between looking at his face and avoiding all potential for eye contact.

After an awkward, heart-pounding second, she introduced herself by name.

"Ah! New, yes. I really did think I knew everyone who lived here," said the man cheerfully, scratching the back of his neck.

Sakura's eyebrows furrowed. Considering that there were probably only about twenty people in this tiny place... _yeah._

Was he... kind of an idiot?

That was a pity. He was so good to look at, and he seemed so friendly.

"Hashirama," Kakuzu ground out.

Sakura blinked, remembering him there at the register right behind her. When she glanced back, he wasn't even looking at either of them.

"Do you need something or are you just here to harass my customers?" Without even moving or taking his eyes off the book he was rapidly scribbling in, Kakuzu somehow made it sound like the decision to harass his customers would not be advantageous to Hashirama's health. 'His customers' apparently included Sakura, now that she'd spent money here, although that was funny because _she'd_ had the impression she was viewed more like a bacterial colony he hadn't found the time to eradicate just yet.

"Always the joker, Kakuzu," said Hashirama, with a laugh like that was actually a joke Kakuzu was making. He even managed to make it seem natural. Maybe it _was_ natural, Sakura thought wildly, and he was actually just this oblivious. Was that possible? Looking at Hashirama, she was forced to think it might be. "I'm just here to drop off the mail for collection."

He waved a thin pile of letters. Sakura supposed it made sense that the postal service didn't deliver out here every day- and that they might use the general store as a makeshift post office.

That idea only made her feel more isolated. Her stomach lurched anxiously. Was moving out here a good idea?

It was a bit late for second guessing. She'd just have to find out by moving forward.

"The post was yesterday," said Kakuzu, glancing at the pile sourly.

"Keep it for the next collection, then. I'm sure it can't be a bother, all it has to do is sit there until then." Smiling, Hashirama dropped the letters on his bench, on top of whatever paperwork he was attempting.

Sakura took the opportunity to sidle past and toward the door of the shop. She could feel the pleasant warmth radiating from Hashirama's big form when she had to pass him. He seemed nice, if a bit dim, but obviously this conversation was none of her business.

The smiling man turned to catch her before she'd made it all the way through the door, reaching past her - _over her,_ technically, tall bastard - to hold the door open so she could step through. "You're leaving already? I didn't even get to welcome you."

Sakura glanced back at him and hesitated. _What?_

He took her momentary pause in both hands and ran with it. "Good morning, Kakuzu," Hashirama called, and then he was steering Sakura through the door through sheer force of personality. The door banged shut behind them. If Kakuzu made any response, she didn't hear it.

"Sakura, you said? Are you visiting family here or something? I'm sorry," he added, scratching the back of his neck and smiling. "I feel like I'm coming on too strong, but I'm so excited! We never get visitors out here, you know? Unless they're with RapidCorp, I guess-" he made a face, but smoothed over it quickly, "-but you don't seem that type."

"Is there a 'type'?" Sakura wondered. RapidCorp employed thousands of people and surely everyone had to work.

Hashirama laughed. It was a nice laugh, strong and deep and genuine sounding.

"Well, it's not buying pillows at their competition, is it?" he said, as though this was extremely obvious.

Sakura felt mildly alarmed, somewhere in her hindbrain, by how astute that observation actually was, considering he was a complete stranger. A complete stranger who'd seemed equally like a complete _idiot._

"I suppose not," she said slowly, eyeing him.

Funny, Sakura had lamented how unfriendly Kakuzu was, but now that she'd actually met someone friendly she felt immediately suspicious. _Why_ was he so friendly?

She was conscious that he'd moved to the edge of her personal space as soon as they'd gotten through the door, too, and he didn't seem to be trying to steer her anywhere now that they were out of Kakuzu's shop.

This was less alarming than his initial interest seemed to suggest. Maybe he really was just excited about seeing a new person in town?

"I don't actually know anyone here. I'm staying at the farm on the west edge of town - I'm likely to stay there for a while," she explained.

"Oh, the old Uchiha place? " Hashirama said thoughtfully. His smile shrunk, but didn't completely disappear. It was an expression less friendly, more contemplative. "You're a friend of that family, then?"

"That's complicated," she said, because she certainly didn't want to say: _well no actually I just divorced one of them but I got this farm in the middle of nowhere like a consolation prize in exchange for the ashes of my marriage, and how has your morning been, sir?_ Why was this all about her anyway?

"What do you do, Hashirama?" she wondered. She didn't really care that much, but he was friendly and knee-wobblingly attractive and she could use some friends. Maybe she'd care later.

"Me, personally?" he looked happy to be asked, at least. "I'm the-"

" _How long does it take to put four letters on a table?_ "

Sakura jumped.

"Brother!" crowed Hashirama in a tone of delight, turning to angle his body so the slightly shorter man behind him could see both of them - and be seen in turn. "I was just talking to Sakura. She's staying at the old farm! Isn't that exciting?"

Hashirama's brother was a few inches shorter, but just as unfairly well-proportioned as he was. Unlike Hashirama's melting dark eyes and black hair and smooth tanned skin, he was ghostly pale, with white hair and dark, reddish eyes.

He was as quiet as a wary cat, and from his face he seemed about half as friendly.

"The owners were updated a month ago," he said, presumably to his brother, although his eyes were fixed on Sakura. "It's a pleasure to meet you," he said, unsmiling, as his eyes lingered on her pink hair, "but Hashirama as work to do. I'm sure you will see more of each other later."

"She's new here, you're going to scare her away," predicted Hashirama, as though Sakura wasn't standing right there watching him turn from a grown adult to a pouty child in 2.5 seconds.

"Actually," she said, glancing between them and shifting the weight of her bag on her shoulder. "I need to go too."

"See? She has work to do too, because it is the middle of the working morning," said the much paler and grumpier brother, in staunch defiance of the fact that it wasn't even nine yet. "Good morning," he added to Sakura, in a voice that clearly indicated he meant 'good bye'.

"What if," Hashirama said to his dead-eyed brother, even as he was tugged away by a vicegrip on his elbow, "she gets lost?" There were four streets in the village, so that seemed extremely unlikely to Sakura, especially with the RapidMart sign towering over the village. "We would be remiss in not showing her around. Tobirama!"

"There are four streets in the village. She will find her way." Tobirama was unsympathetic and also absolutely unmoved by the look Hashirama turned upon him.

Hashirama's expression twitched in the face of this indifference, and then a second later he whirled and levelled the very same face at her. Sakura discovered a heretofore unknown weakness for attractive men looking woebegone.

This wasn't fair. Sasuke had never pulled that on her; he was miles too proud. She wasn't prepared!

"Um," she said, feeling all her insides melt at the expression in his huge, dark eyes. Maybe she didn't need help with directions, exactly, she found herself thinking, but he clearly wanted to be helpful so badly, what could it possibly...

"Brother," snarled Tobirama. Sakura flinched at his tone. He caught it in his peripheral vision and then offered her a tight smile, which did not soften his expression in the slightest. Tobirama, Sakura suspected, could do 'handsome' just fine, but he'd probably never match Hashirama's desolate begging eyes. He, like Kakuzu, did not have a face made for gentle expressions.

"Ha," said Sakura, feeling deeply awkward and also like she couldn't wait to leave just so Tobirama would stop looking at her with his face. "Haha. Well. I'm sure you all have work to do, and now you know where to, er, where to find me," she was not sure if this was a good thing to be honest, but at least she knew her door locked properly. "I have to - to get back, and - nice to meet you, Hashirama, Tobirama -"

And then she was away, out from beneath Tobirama's stern stare and the equally toxic influence of Hashirama's huge, lustrous eyes and gut-wrenchingly handsome face. Anything else either of them may have said was lost to the voice of the river, which she crossed without looking back.

She turned her feet toward the farm.

The walk seemed to go a lot faster when she had some very weird strangers to think about, instead of her own circumstances and shortcomings.


	3. Chapter 3

A walk around the perimeter of the property seemed like a much worse idea by the time Sakura had actually gotten back to her tiny farmhouse. The walk into the village and back had been cumulatively kind of tiring, even though it was barely after nine in the morning. She wasn't at all used to that kind of exercise.

Or, if she was honest, really... any kind of exercise.

She arrived back to her new place full of its stumpy little trees and hard packed earth and wondered if her nebulous plans to attack that problem herself - probably with an axe - were really as feasible as she liked to think. She wasn't very fit, and it seemed like an overwhelmingly physical task. Maybe she'd do alright if she began small... did one tiny bit at a time...

She put off following the crumbling fence that marked her property line, but there wasn't enough precious phone battery to spend her time messing around on the internet. She didn't have any friends out here, and she had no books or films or, or even handicrafts, which she was universally terrible at anyway, with which to occupy herself. What did people _do_ in their downtime in the dark ages before the internet?

In despair, Sakura dug up a rag and dusted the inside of her tiny farm house. It needed it, anyway. The windows and the ledges were dark with dust. When she opened the place up to air it out, a soft, sweet-smelling breeze came through, which was at least mildly cheering.

She shook the dust sheet out, beat out the rug, and gave the window panes an unenthusiastic swipe. Then she tossed her new blanket onto her bed - what did they mean, 'wash before use'? She didn't have a washing machine, and she wasn't walking back into the village to access one, so that was clearly too hard - and peered at her pillow uncertaintly, wondering if it was a good idea to bury her face in that without a case.

Probably... not.

After a second staring, Sakura slid a teeshirt on her pillow and tucked the sleeves in. It was... _like_ a case. Right? Right.

Briefly, Sakura wondered how Mikoto would feel about the manner in which she was living in her house. A cloud passed before the bright morning sun. The breeze seemed suddenly colder. Quite a bit colder, actually. Hmm.

Maybe she'd get a nice proper case later. And... wash things. When she knew how she was going to do that. Was there a laundromat in the village? She hadn't seen one, but she certainly didn't have a washing machine out here.

That was a problem for when she actually had electricity. Baby steps, she reminded herself.

She went to drop the dust sheet in her chest, and paused upon cracking the lid open. The air smelled like metal, and of an old place that hadn't seen daylight in forever. In its shadowy innards was a glint of metal, so she dropped the sheet and peered inside at a surprising collection of worn tools.

One of them, she was pleased to see, was definitely an axe. Another was some kind of pick, and there was one with a head on it that looked perfect for breaking up the hard packed earth.

"Huh," said Sakura. Then she unearthed the tools and set them carefully on the floor nearest the door before she put the dust sheet away. She'd probably need them.

Maybe, Sakura thought, she could try cutting up some wood tomorrow. How hard could it be to cut down trees no thicker than her leg? And then she'd have firewood. If she still didn't have electricity by then, afire would be pretty welcome for the light and the heat.

After that reminder, she turned her phone back on. It dinged cheerfully. The medical board had emailed her and officially suspended her from practice.

She ignored that and dialled the electricity company. They didn't seem thrilled with her urgency.

"Sorry," said the woman who'd answered, "you're _where_?"

"Dawn Valley," Sakura repeated patiently, perched on top of the chest and wriggling her toes in the sunlight from her open door. The sun had finally woken up properly for the day, and now it was only cool in the shade. Outside, all she could see was grasses and dirt and trees.

It looked like a place needed more than a RapidMart to put it on the map, at least as far as big electrical providers were concerned.

"I'll see what we can do," said the telephonist, sounding more worried than reassuring. "I know you said it was urgent, but that's so far out, ah, I'm very sorry, but..."

"Sure, okay," said Sakura, chewing on a strand of pink hair, "but it won't be more than a week, right?"

"Oh.. er, I don't really have experience with anything that far into the countryside? If you were in the city, I'd think it would probably take no more than two days, but I don't really..."

"Okay, well, you can check, right? And email me?"

The voice on the line perked right up. "Oh, yes, I can do that. Certainly. I'll let you know."

Sakura made a relieved noise. At least she'd get a timeline for getting electricity connected. She had a finite supply of canned tea, after all, and didn't look forward to any efforts to boil water over the open fire.

She'd need to get a fridge. She hadn't seen anything that big being sold at the general store, but she bet Kakuzu would at least know how to get one out here to her. He seemed grumpy, but he'd been like that with Hashirama, too - and it had seemed a lot more personal then.

The general store guy was just a grumpy human being, Sakura decided. Some people were just like that. She'd know -she'd married one, once upon a time.

She watched the dust motes dance in the light and daydreamed briefly about the fridge she'd left with Sasuke in his giant, beautiful, stately house: huge, with two doors, individually temperature-controlled compartments. There was a lever on the front that spat out icy water from a spigot if you remembered to fill the reservoir. She missed it.

If Sakura was sitting here fantasizing about Sasuke's whitegoods, it was _definitely_ time to get back to her feet and get on with her day. She toed the door closed behind her as she left. Time to see how big his place really was.

The answer was: it was big. Huge, even. It took her mind to get to the south boundary of the property than it did to go into the village.

The terrain was less forgiving. Sakura thought of herself as a person who was reasonably dextrous - she cut into other human beings and rearranged their insides for a living for years, after all. She had pretty good nerves and very deft hands. But she still found herself skidding on slick, half-rotted leaf litter or stumbling over hidden dips, ruts and holes whose provenance she could not determine.

At least the day was bright and clear and not very cold in the sun. The air smelled like earth and grasses and, despite the relative scarcity of clouds, a very little like rain encroaching. Birds sang to each other from where they were hidden among the mess of overgrown farmland, and occasionally Sakura's footsteps interrupted the soft humming of early season insects.

It was nice. Peaceful. The sun warmed her skin. The air smelled good. There was no pollution out here. It was quiet and peaceful and serene and Sakura reminded herself that, circumstances aside, _anybody_ would be lucky to -

 **BOOM**.

The ground underfoot vibrated with the enormity of the blast. To the south, birds shrieked and scattered, dark ominous shapes in the sky above.

 _Oh thank god,_ Sakura thought, and nimbly jumped her own fence to find out what on earth that had been.

That huge sound had not been from far away. The forest was a lot denser than Sakura's own property, with underbrush that had apparently never been cut, and huge gnarled tree roots and a smothering dark canopy above. It still only took her few minutes to find the place where she thought the disturbance had originated. The trees nearby were stripped of their old bark and new leaves, blackened and still smoking in the otherwise cool air. The dirt had been kicked up all over, leaving huge troughs and mounds scattered. of Even some of the rocks looked worse for wear, scorched blackly along their sides.

She inhaled. She could smell the smoke - and not just the smoke of burning wood, either, but something heavier and more acrid. She hoped it wasn't toxic.

"Hello?" she called out, inching forward. She was pretty sure some of that in the dirt was shattered crockery, which seemed really ominous. Had there been a person at the middle of all this?

A branch creaked threateningly overhead. Sakura gingerly stepped back again.

"It's fine!" yelled someone, and then his voice dissolved into a series of breathless coughs that did not strongly support that statement.

Sakura rested one hand on top of an enormous fallen branch - or maybe it was a trunk? - twitched at the surprisingheat radiating from it, and pressed to see if it would hold her. Then, cautiously, she climbed on top of it, avoiding the worst-burnt bits, which still seemed apt to crumble beneath her boots. She jumped down with a thump.

There was, beyond the felled tree, a large and very dirty ditch. The man in it was still coughing.

It didn't sound great.

"Hey, you can hear me, right?" said Sakura, crouching down.

"I _said_ it's fine, yeah," he snapped, and then he coughed again and rolled over with a groan. "Do I even know you?"

"No," Sakura said, "but I'm a doctor." Well. A surgeon. A... suspended surgeon. Maybe an ex-surgeon. It was hardly the time to pick nits about that, though.

"Good for you, lady. I don't need a doctor, I need - to get out - of-"

Awkwardly, Sakura stuck her hand out. With an annoyed grunt the stranger grabbed it. His grip seemed disproportionately strong for his size.

The guy shook off some of the dirt as he stumbled to his feet with the aid of Sakura's hand for balance. Under the trickling dirt it looked like his hair was pale, and the scowling eyes he finally fixed on Sakura were large and surprisingly lucid and bluer than the sky.

"Huh," he said. His scowl fell away. He was, Sakura realised, actually pretty young. Certainly not older than she was.

His hand went lax in hers.

There was a second's pause.

Sakura gently disentangled their fingers, feeling the loose dirt trickle between them.

"Hi," she said into the silence. "I heard the bang, I thought-"

"Yeah," he interrupted, "It's fine. I'm fine. I just didn't expect it to be so big, is all. Is my camera okay?"

"Your... camera?" She glanced around, but did not immediately see a camera. Had he been out here photographing wildlife or something?

He ran one dirty hand through his equally filthy hair. It came away smeared and tacky.

Sakura wondered if it would be too pushy of her to point out that he was bleeding, and that bleeding freely from the head was, you know, usually not a great sign. But then he looked at his hand, clicked his tongue in irritation and summarily ignored it.

He climbed out of his ditch with relative ease and stalked past her, already muttering to himself. He wasn't that much taller than Sakura, which was a relief. After meeting Hashirama and Tobirama this morning, and seeing Kakuzu again, Sakura had been a little worried that she'd stepped into the Land of Improbably Tall Men.

His gait was normal, at least - no stumbling or staggering - and he seemed completely able to hear her clearly. She watched him bend down to fuss with something just outside the circle of worst destruction. Yeah, he could probably decide what to do with his own injuries... even if his decision was stupid. At this point Sakura felt like she knew all about making stupid decisions, so she guessed she wouldn't begrudge him his.

"Where'd you come from? There's not usually anyone out here - else I wouldn't work out here. Phew! It's not broken," he added, spinning around and waving what did indeed look like a camera - a very dirty camera with slightly warped casing.

"The farm," she pointed vaguely north. "I was just trying to get a feel for the boundaries of it, and I heard the bang, so-"

"That farm?" he interrupted her. He stiffened, followed her pointing hand with his eyes, and then returned his focus to the camera and did not look back up at her when he asked: "You're an Uchiha, then?"

Sakura had gone by 'Uchiha' for so long she stalled for a few long seconds, until the silence was actually worse than just saying 'yes' and then correcting herself might have been.

He looked up. Beneath the dirt, his mouth twisted. He raised an eyebrow at her, although it was hard to distinguish amid the dirt on his face. "Was that hard question for you?"

Sakura laughed awkwardly. "I used to be," she said. "I'm still getting the divorce sorted out. Paperwork and... you know."

Looking at him, she'd bet he did not know, actually. He didn't seem like the marrying type. Or the type who, uh, experienced human company very often. But it seemed rude to say so.

"Right. Well. Good riddance to bad shit. Stiff losers with poles up their butts, yeah. Breakups suck, though. Hey, you wanna see some art?"

This man had clearly been raised by wolves. Not very polite ones, either. Rude wolves. Sakura elected, very magnanimously, to give him some leeway for his manners on the basis of being caught in an explosion and dumped in a ditch.

"Pleased to meet you," she said from between her teeth. "What's your name?"

He blinked. "Oh." Then he laughed, a short and startling bark in the still forest. "I'm Deidara. I'm an artist. Here, let me show you-"

He spun his whole body around in a flutter of dirt and fabric so she could see the screen of what turned out to be a pretty fancy looking digital camera, wiped mostly clean on the inside of his collar.

Bemused, and a little charmed by his evident enthusiasm, she looked.

"Oh," she said softly.

The sculpture was of a bird with its wings half stretched - some kind of raptor with a curved beak and fierce talons. It wasn't exactly to her taste, but it was intricate and delicate and she could only begin to contemplate how much time and effort had to go into getting every feather and bone so carefully accurate. It looked like it could take flight at any second.

Sakura didn't know a blessed thing about art but she knew it must have taken a reasonable degree of skill to make something like that.

"You're a sculptor?"

"Sort of. I guess," said Deidara, with almost no interest, and swiped to the next image. And then the next.

Sakura swallowed. The shutter speed had to have been tremendous, because each frame captured was of a different moment, and each one showed the rapid, violent, explosive destruction of the sculpture.

She guessed she knew what kind of crockery had been in the blast now - a pretty, ceramic bird of prey.

Wait. "You blew it up _on purpose?_ "

Deidara looked sideways at her, looking a bit savage and a lot unhinged through all the dirt. "Um, _yeah_ ," he said, as though it was obvious and Sakura was the crazy one here.

"Is that, er," she didn't really know anything about art, and now she had no idea what to say about it. What did wild crazy artists in the forest like? Aggressive political polemic..? "Is that a - a statement?"

Deidara blinked. "You don't like it?"

It would definitely be dishonest to say she liked it. Sakura held up both her hands, pasted on a smile and lied: "No, no, of course I like it, it's - it's so unique!"

His eyes narrowed, and his expression went tight. "It's fine if you don't like it. Not everybody likes the same things. The point of art is to make you think and feel things, not to make you _comfortable_."

He spat 'comfortable' like it was a dirty word.

 _I am definitely not comfortable_ , she thought wildly, taking a step back from him. Had she really thought he was short? He seemed to loom more than the trees in his sudden intensity.

Oh no, he was waiting for her to say something.

Gamely, she tried again. "It just seems like a bit of a shame, because, you know, the sculpture is so-"

He interrupted her. Again. "Of course it is!"

She stared him.

He stared back at her with mounting frustration.

"I don't really know anything about art, sorry," Sakura said slowly. She wondered how she was going to extricate herself from this awful conversation, and if it was really okay to be all alone in the middle of the forest with this man.

"Well." He sniffed. His shoulders relaxed. "At least you can admit it, yeah. But you don't have to _like_ it. That's not what it's for."

Sakura sort of wanted to a ask what on earth it _was_ for, in that case, but she also thought she probably didn't want to endure learning about it.

There was a silence.

"It's definitely not like anything else I've seen," she said cautiously.

"There!" He pointed the lopsided camera at her like a weapon, looking absolutely crazed with dirt and soot all over his face and, now, a trickle of blood leaking from his hair onto his forehead. The dirt clumped around it. "That's better."

 _I,_ Sakura thought anxiously, _have to get out of here right now._ She opened her mouth to make an excuse - any excuse would do, the perimeter of her new property certainly wasn't going to discover itself! - but that was when Deidara seemed to notice he was still bleeding from his head.

"Are you really a doctor?" he asked finally, in a much smaller and more vulnerable voice. He looked a little lost, suddenly.

She mentally revised her assessment of his age - lower. Deidara was almost certainly younger than her.

Sakura was silent for a long moment. He did look pretty wretched, but she also had to consider her own comfort and safety. Did she _really_ want to...

Even as she thought this completely pertinent thought, Deidara shook his head and then tried to rub the streak of blood away from his eye with the heel of one dirty hand. Mostly he just smeared it everywhere, and then looked down at his stained hand like it had betrayed him unexpectedly.

...Aw, hell.


End file.
